A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automated processing of business tasks and, more specifically, to a generic computer system that can be configured to define, execute, monitor and control the flow of business operations.
B. Description of the Related Art
The operation of a business can be viewed as an organized sequence of activities whose ultimate purpose is to produce a product or provide a service; this end result may be termed a "goal". Each business activity in the sequence involves performance of one or more items of work that bring the business one step closer to completion of the goal. Activities may be strictly ordered with respect to one another, conditionally ordered or completely unordered; they may be automated, partially automated or performed manually; and may be performed using resources within or outside the business.
In a large class of businesses, individual work items progress through the sequence of activities until they have been transformed into a finished item; that is, until the ultimate goal is achieved. Hereafter, such work items are referred to as "works in process", or WIPs, and the path followed by a WIP is termed a "workflow". For WIP-oriented businesses, resource and task management can prove difficult; this is particularly so where the WIP is processed according to a predetermined sequence of activities, each of which is carried out only if appropriate conditions are met, and by different personnel or machines using different pieces of information.
A useful example of such a business, and one to which we shall return later, is a mail-order enterprise. For purposes of this example, suppose that the business is divided into three departments: the front office, the warehouse floor, and the shipping dock. These departments execute the four main business activities: receiving and performing the initial check of an order; processing the order; performing final checks on the goods to be shipped; and actually shipping the goods. Such a scheme is illustrated in FIG. 1.
The initial order check consists of verifying the customer's credit rating, and determining whether the goods are available from inventory; these activities are performed sequentially. Processing the order consists of filling the order, an activity which involves the three parallel subactivities of sending a label, box and the merchandise to shipping; locating and packaging the ordered goods; and preparing an invoice, which involves the two sequential subactivities of generating an invoice and printing the invoice. The final-check activity involves inspection of the order, and is followed by the activity of shipping.
In this example, or processing path, can involve a number of separate resources: different personnel in each of the three departments, each group beyond initial intake requiring status information regarding the progress of the previous group before activity can be commenced; different computational resources (e.g., a third-party credit verification database, inventory-control equipment and spreadsheet and/or word-processor application programs); and different criteria governing when various activities can begin.
Because of the variety of resources and the necessity of maintaining a relatively fixed business procedure, integrating these different resources can create dynamic logistical problems that interfere with efficient operation. Such problems arise from the need for communication among resources; the necessity of selectively combining resources from physically disparate locations (e.g., it may be necessary for the same operator to access different computer terminals to perform the credit check and then print a label); bottlenecks that reflect inefficiencies in resource allocation; and the need to segregate different activities for efficiency or security reasons (e.g., it may not be desirable for the same operator to print the label and also perform the credit check).
Unfortunately, while an ordinary computer system of sufficient capacity may be capable of executing most of the mail-order steps described above (using several application programs and with varying degrees of human and mechanical assistance), it is, at present, quite cumbersome to custom-tailor such a system to efficiently accommodate the specialized pattern of activities that defines the workflow; and even if such a "metasystem" can be configured, it is likely to be very difficult to modify should a change in workflow procedure become desirable.